Venezuela

After midnight on Dec. 6, when the trend was already irreversible, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) publicly announced the results of that day’s parliamentary elections in Venezuela. Of the 167 seats at stake in the legislature, the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) won 99, while the ruling Great Patriotic Pole coalition won only 46 seats. There were 22 seats still in question, whose results would not change the parliamentary majority....

A further militarization in the Mediterranean has been approved through a resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council on Oct. 9. By a 14 to 1 vote, European Union naval forces were empowered to purportedly halt and turn back vessels transporting migrants across the Mediterranean into Southern Europe. Only the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela abstained in the decision. Millions of people have been dislocated throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia in the worst refugee crisis since the conclusion of World War II....

Venezuela has offered asylum to 20,000 Syrian refugees. President Nicolás Maduro, head of the revolutionary Bolivarian government, made the announcement on Sept 7. Nearly 11 million Syrians — almost half of the population — have been displaced by war: 6.5 million internally, while 4.1 million have fled the country. (CNN, Sept. 11)...

The following is a statement of the Peace Delegation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP) from Havana, Cuba, site of the peace talks, dated Aug. 28, discussing the crisis between Colombia and Venezuela:...

There have been reports in the U.S. corporate media about the conflict on the border area between Colombia and Venezuela that distort the events there and omit the history of this conflict as well as the disruptive and subversive role of U.S. imperialism in the region. The following is a letter to Workers World from someone who lived in Colombia for many years that clarifies much of this....

It has been a decade since the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were dislocated due to the federal government’s failure to protect their communities and rebuild them after Hurricane Katrina....

Today U.S.-made and paid-for missiles and bombs are raining down on people around the world. Washington funds violent right-wing movements from Venezuela to Syria to Macedonia. It is interfering in a regional dispute in the South China Sea to threaten China. It is establishing more military bases in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. Here at home, U.S. police kill and brutalize people of color....

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has called on supporters to join a campaign rejecting a smear campaign against the Bolivarian Revolution. Maduro was responding to a lengthy May 18 Wall Street Journal article that falsely accuses National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello of drug trafficking and money laundering and that slanders Bolivarian Venezuela as a “global cocaine hub.”...

The “VII Summit of the Americas,” to be held April 10-11 in Panama City, Panama, is of particular interest since Latin American and Caribbean states firmly told the Organization of American States there would be no further summits where Cuba was excluded, forcing the U.S. to agree....

Ever since Comandante Hugo Chavez became president of Venezuela in 1998 and the Bolivarian Revolution began, there has been no time that the opposition — supported and, to a large extent, led by the United States — has stopped trying to overturn the revolutionary process. It is a story repeated many times in Latin America — so much so that there’s a joke that “the U.S. is the only country where there are no coups because there is no Yankee embassy there.”

At the initiative of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, on Oct. 20
heads of state from the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our
Americas—Peoples’ Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP), along with health
agencies and professionals, representatives of the United Nations, the
Pan-American Health Organization and the Organization of East Caribbean States,
met in Havana to chart an action plan to help confront the Ebola epidemic in
Africa and prevent its expansion to other regions....

Venezuela is in the midst of the difficult task of constructing the path to
socialism. Like any living process, it does not go forward in a straight line.
It instead has advances and setbacks, mistakes and corrections. The important
thing is the continuous effort of the people in propelling the construction of
a fair system to once and for all supplant the violent capitalism still
prevalent in Venezuela....

“No to fascism in Ukraine! No war with Russia!” was the theme of
the International Action Center protest in New York’s Times Square on May
26, Memorial Day. The demonstrators’ determination to denounce U.S.
aggression and the expansion of NATO into Ukraine contrasted with the general
mood of the sunny spring holiday. Speakers at the rally demanded hands off the Republics of Donetsk and
Lugansk and expressed solidarity with the anti-fascist fighters there.
Representatives of South American liberation struggles in Venezuela and
Honduras spoke, aligning with those in Eastern Europe fighting against U.S.
imperialism. Anti-war soldiers denounced the Pentagon on Memorial Day and
called for people to remember those murdered by fascists in Ukraine. After more than an hour in Times Square, the demonstration set off for CNN
headquarters, about a mile away. Signs opposing the U.S. war machine and
militant slogans got a great reception from many tourists and passersby as the
demonstration moved up Broadway....

While the eyes of the world focus on the events in Ukraine, the U.S. empire is using this opportunity to intensify its plan to overthrow governments in the Latin American and Caribbean region that are leading the process for change there — Cuba and Venezuela....

Some 260 leftist political activists from 39 countries, mostly in Latin
America and the Caribbean but including people from around the world, gathered
in Mexico City from March 27 to 29. They joined hundreds from the hosting Labor
Party (Partido del Trabajo or PT) at its 18th International Seminar. Some 100
speakers, from a broad range of left political positions, spoke on many
subjects with a common thread: the danger posed by Washington’s
aggressive posture toward all countries south of the U.S. border and especially
toward the Bolivarian government of Venezuela....

Progressives in Latin America and the
Caribbean have put defense of the Venezuelan government and people at the top
of their priorities. They showed this today when a seminar that had begun as a
standard exchange of information among workers and progressive organizations
from the continent and worldwide turned into a demonstration of solidarity with
Bolivarian Venezuela....

In response to a call from the International Action Center, demonstrations,
outreach and other actions took place in cities and areas across the United
States in mid-March to demand U.S. hands off Venezuela and no U.S. intervention
in Ukraine or Russia. These actions also countered the lies and distortions of
the big-business-owned media regarding the situation in these areas of the
world....

Confronting a barrage of pro-war propaganda, anti-war groups, low-wage
workers and community activists are beginning to mobilize against U.S. war
moves in Ukraine, while continuing to rally against Washington’s efforts
to destabilize Venezuela’s Bolivarian government....

The International Action Center publishes here in full the statement by the
United National Antiwar Coalition, which demands “U.S. Hands off Ukraine
and Venezuela” and calls the U.S. government “the main instigator
of the present crises in both countries.”...

Anti-war activists rallied in New York’s Times Square in the bitter
cold on Feb. 27 to protest the U.S. and European Union’s blatant
intervention that is promoting fascist elements against the people of Venezuela
and Ukraine. The International Action Center and Fight Imperialism, Stand
Together (FIST), a youth organization that had scheduled a regional conference
here on March 2, called the action, which other anti-imperialists joined....

The bloody interventionist hand of US imperialism abounds. Whether it is in
the Ukraine or in Venezuela, right-wing forces that support and want to
continue austerity measures, or reverse the revolutionary progress made in
Venezuela by the Chavez/Maduro administrations that benefits the workers and
the poor of Venezuela are taking center stage right now emboldened by their
backers in Washington....

Destroying the Ukraine government through an armed insurrection is part
of a broader strategy by U.S. imperialism to colonize the former Soviet
republics and encircle Russia. The right-wing forces now running Kiev would let
the Ukrainian masses become debt slaves to U.S., French and German
banks. Washington has escalated its global campaign of reactionary subversion from Ukraine to Venezuela. A takeover in Ukraine would bring the Pentagon and Wall Street to the borders of Russia. In Venezuela, the Bolivarian Revolution is crucial to the bloc of countries resisting U.S. imperialist
domination in Latin America....

When the imperialist strategists want money, they get it.
Billions of dollars have been made available for U.S.-backed crimes of
sabotage, destabilization and aggressive intervention, including funds for the
most reactionary fascist elements in Venezuela, pro-Nazis in the Ukraine,
and for forces linked to al-Qaida in Syria....

The current violence by rightist forces opposing the Bolivarian Revolution is a continuation of the siege that began in 2001 when President Hugo Chávez approved 49 economic laws in the framework of the Enabling Law of 2001. At that time, particularly the Land Law and the Law on Hydrocarbons represented the first threat of the revolution to the economic
power of the comprador bourgeoisie and its imperialist allies. This was years
before Commander Chávez, who died a year ago on March 5, declared
socialism as a path for the revolution....

On May 22, with cries of “That, that, that’s the way to
govern” and “They shall not return” (referring to the
right-wing oligarchy’s lust for power), the first graduating class of the
Jesus Rivero Bolivarian Workers University heard Venezuelan President
Nicolás Maduro’s proposal to create a Workers’ Militia in
workplaces around the country....

The International Action Center joins the Alliance for Global Justice, Witness for Peace-SW, National Lawyers Guild, Boston Bolivarians, National Network on Cuba, and all the organizations in the United States who are mobilizing to defend the Venezuelan election of President Nicolás Maduro and against U.S. interference in that country....

The International Action Center joins the Alliance for Global Justice, Witness for Peace-SW, National Lawyers Guild, Boston Bolivarians, National Network on Cuba, and all the organizations in the United States who are mobilizing to defend the Venezuelan election of President Nicolás Maduro and against U.S. interference in that country....

Fascist-like elements backed by U.S. imperialism are
attempting a coup against constitutional rule in Venezuela. The Venezuelan
masses, other Latin Americans and progressives worldwide are standing up and
saying “no” to this coup, which follows the rightist defeat in that
country’s free and fair election April 14....

Right-wing elements backed by U.S.
imperialism are attempting a coup against constitutional rule in Venezuela.
Seven people in Venezuela have already been killed. There is a witch hunt
against Cuban doctors who have made great sacrifice to provide health care
there. The Venezuelan masses, other Latin Americans and progressives worldwide
have stood up and said "no" to this coup, which follows the rightist
defeat in that country's free and fair election April 15....

Right-wing elements backed by U.S. imperialism are attempting a coup against constitutional rule in Venezuela. Seven people in Venezuela have already been killed. There is a witch hunt against Cuban doctors who have made great sacrifice to provide health care there. The Venezuelan masses, other Latin Americans and progressives worldwide have stood up and said “no” to this coup, which follows the rightist defeat in that country’s free and fair election April 15....

The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has brought out the
malicious and carnal glee of the corporate press, who report breathlessly, not
only on his mortal passing, but an end to the Bolivarian Revolution.

They are the voices of their vampire, Wall Street bosses, who delight in
owning more of the earth, no matter how much misery they may cause for
millions....

He came from humble beginnings from among the teeming millions in Venezuelan
poverty and joined the army as much to make a living as to serve the people.
He and a group of mid-level military officers staged an unsuccessful coup
in February, 1992 against the corrupt regime of President Carlos Andrés
Pérez. Within eight years, the man that led the coup would be elected
president and Hugo Chávez would proclaim Venezuela as home of the
revolutionary liberator, Simón Bolívar, who fought and prevailed
against Spanish colonialists for Latin American independence early in the 19th
century....

It was with profound and searing grief that our people and the Revolutionary
Government learned about the decease of President Hugo Chávez Frías
and are therefore preparing to pay a heartfelt and patriotic tribute to him,
for he will go down in history as a Hero of Our America....

It was a special evening of solidarity with Venezuela on Jan. 31 in Detroit. With President Hugo Chávez ill and recovering from cancer surgery in Cuba, and the U.S. government working overtime with rightwing forces inside Venezuela to promote division and try to destabilize that country, Detroiters wanted to express their solidarity with Chávez, with the Bolivarian Revolution and with the masses of poor and working people in Venezuela....

Ten days of actions and meetings in the United States and other countries began on Feb. 22 in solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Its leader, President Hugo Chávez, is continuing his recovery from cancer surgery in Cuba. The postponement of Chávez’s inauguration for another term as president, attempts by the Venezuelan oligarchy to undermine the government, and bourgeois excitement at the prospect of Chávez’s demise were the impetus for the International Action Center to call these days of solidarity and demand no imperialist intervention in Venezuela....

As a Cuba solidarity network, we lift our voices to tell Washington and the
Venezuelan elite: NO to destabilization efforts in Venezuela, which we fully
recognize is also aimed at Cuba's sovereignty. We say: "Hands off the
Bolivarian Revolution."...

In the U.S., the solidarity and progressive movement will organize National Days of Solidarity With Venezuela to send messages of good wishes to President Chavez and to let the people of Venezuela, especially the poor and working people who most benefit from the Bolivarian Revolution know that we will not allow the Obama administration to intervene in Venezuela....

The Venezuelan people have demonstrated over and over their support and gratitude to President Chavez and clearly remain committed to the process of fundamental change in their country, no matter what. We are confident that the fundamental roots of the Bolivarian Revolution will remain strong and grow....

Jan. 10 — The people of Venezuela poured into the streets by the
hundreds of thousands in the country’s four major cities today to defend
recently re-elected President Hugo Chávez and his government....

On Jan. 3, as part of its regular condition updates of President Hugo
Chávez following his Dec. 11 surgery, the government of the Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela alerted “the Venezuelan public of a campaign of
psychological warfare unleashed by the international media regarding the health
of the head of state,” as the Jan. 10 date anticipated for the oath of
office for his new six-year presidential term nears....

Since Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced the recurrence of
the cancer that he has been battling since 2011 and the need for additional
surgery, he has been the object of world solidarity. He told the Venezuelan
people on Dec. 8 that his last medical examination showed that malignant cells
recurred at the site in his abdomen where he had been treated earlier. As a
result, he needed a fourth operation....

During the 1990's, in Venezuela and in Latin America in general, when the poor were getting poorer and everyone's standard of living was declining precipitously, when we felt that the lights were going out and that our reasons for happiness were evaporating, Hugo Chavez provided his radiant light, the light of the people, of the liberator Simon Bolivar....

With Hugo Chavez’s historic win this October, the Venezuelan people
have committed to carry forward the Bolivarian Revolution, with its advances in
social equality, human rights, community power, and more. Join us this January
to witness the presidential inauguration on January 10th, followed by visits to
different parts of the country. One of the focuses of this trip will be food
sovereignty, or how both the government and the people are taking back control
of the country’s agricultural and food systems. We will also explore
other areas of social transformation, including education, healthcare, and
direct citizen participation in the political process. There will also be trips
to beaches, parks, and other sites of interest....

With Hugo Chavez’s historic win this October, the Venezuelan people have committed to carry forward the Bolivarian Revolution, with its advances in social equality, human rights, community power, and more. Join us this January to witness the presidential inauguration on January 10th, followed by visits to different parts of the country. One of the focuses of this trip will be food sovereignty, or how both the government and the people are taking back control of the country’s agricultural and food systems. We will also explore other areas of social transformation, including education, healthcare, and direct citizen participation in the political process. There will also be trips to beaches, parks, and other sites of interest....

From Dec. 3 to 5 in Tijuana, Mexico — just minutes from the San Diego,
Calif., airport — a cross-section of workers from Latin America who are
confronting the global crisis will meet with U.S. workers grappling with
devastating challenges. Building on six previous conferences, the
meeting’s aim is to grow the unity of the working class in the Americas
and increase its influence — from the tip of Chile to Alaska — by
sharing problems but also examining strategies to fight and win....

Cuban leaders of the Confederation of Cuban Worker s (CTC) will visit Tijuana,
Mexico, a border city 15 minutes south of downtown San Diego and the
San Diego Airport - U.S./Mexico border. This conference will give people
from North America (the United States, Canada and Mexico) the opportunity to
hear first hand from the Latinoamerican and Caribbean workers. Also, you will
hear from Union leaders of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Haiti,
Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador, Puerto Rico and the
U.S. discussing the social and labor movements in the Americas.

and coordinators of Encuentro Sindical Nuestra America have also been
invited. ESNA is a new development that involves the largest and most militant
labor federations throughout Latin America....

The International Action Center has announced the formation of the Latin America-Caribbean Solidarity Committee. The committee has already begun planning a number of events in solidarity with the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) of Honduras....

I have been reading some of the slogans painted on the streets, and I think
those slogans of these youngsters, some of which I heard when I was young, and
of the young woman there, two of which I noted. You can hear among others, two
powerful slogans. One: Don’t change the climate, change the system....

A summit of African and South American leaders convened on the
Venezuelan-Caribbean island of Margarita Sept. 26-27. The gathering was a
follow-up to the first Africa-South America Summit held in Abuja, Nigeria, in
November 2006....

The discussion of this legal project, named Organic Law of
Gender Equality, represents a further advance of your Revolution and
demonstrates the wish to correct these inequalities and discriminations which
for decades have plagued our societies. We understand that it is not possible to have a society with justice and equality when some of the members of that society suffer discrimination, whether it is because of their age, the color of their skin, their ethnic origins, their sex or their sexual orientation....

Cuban leaders of the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC) will visit Tijuana, Mexico, a city 15 minutes from the San Diego, U.S./Mexico border. This conference will give people from North America (the United States, Canada and Mexico) the opportunity to hear first hand from the Cubans about Cuba’s workers and their unions. Also, you will hear from leaders of the Venezuelan union, UNT, about the present situation of the Venezuelan revolution and the issues facing Venezuelan workers, representatives of Mexico, United States, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Haiti, the Philippines and Nicaragua discussing the social and labor movements in the Americas....

Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New
York City on May 15th to protest the presentation of the Milton Friedman Prize
to Yon Goichochea. Inside, the leader of a counterrevolutionary Venezuelan student group received the award at a lavish $500-a-plate banquet sponsored by The Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank....

With the theme "Sovereignty and Food Security: Food for Life," delegations from 15 countries met in Managua, Nicaragua, on May 7 to discuss and plan strategies to confront the serious hunger crisis that is affecting the
peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean....

U.S. imperialism is ramping up its military threats in Latin America and the Caribbean. On April 24 the U.S. Navy announced the re-establishment of the U.S.
Fourth Fleet to increase and coordinate the U.S. military presence there. As a
sign of its aggressive intent, the new commander is Rear Adm. Joseph D. Kernan, who has been head of the Naval Special Warfare Command, better known as the SEALs....

n early January, in a unilateral move, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) released two women it had been holding. Its aim was to demonstrate it was serious about wanting to negotiate a humanitarian exchange of prisoners with the Colombian government....

The Venezuelan government has promised that the recent attempts by the world's largest oil company, ExxonMobil, to steal assets that belong to the Venezuelan people will be met with stiff resistance....

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez publicly announced on Jan. 9 that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia had just sent him details of the location in their country where two women held by the FARC, Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo, were to be released....

The Venezuelan National Electoral Commission (CNE) early on Dec. 3 announced the results of the previous day's referendum on proposed major changes to 69 articles of the Venezuelan Constitution. The "No" vote opposing the reforms had won by a margin of less than 2 percent over the "Yes" option, which would have deepened progressive changes and ratified the reconstruction of society on a socialist basis....

The original purpose of this meeting has been completely distorted. The imposed center of debate has been a so-called reform process that overshadows the most urgent issues, what the peoples of the world claim with urgency: the adoption of measures that deal with the real problems that block and sabotage the efforts made by our countries for real development and life. ...

Venezuelan counter-revolutionaries, with the full support of the U.S. and other
imperialist governments, have been attempting to use the non-renewal of Radio
Caracas Television's (RCTV) broadcasting license to destabilize the
popular progressive government of President Hugo Chevez....

Since 1998, when current President Hugo Chavez won a popular election in
Venezuela, the U.S. government has worked tirelessly with the oligarchy in that
country to overturn Chavez's presidency. Chavez was re-elected in 2000,
again by a large turnout from the people....

Under the theme “Women of the World: a
vital force against neoliberal globalization, terrorism and imperialist wars;
for equality, social and economic justice and for peace,” more than 1,000
women representing organizations from five continents met in Caracas,
Venezuela, from April 9 through 14. They were joined by thousands of Venezuelan
women who hosted the 14th Congress of the Women’s International
Democratic Federation....